I am an Emmy Award-winning composer and Juno Award-winning jazz pianist who specializes in writing, arranging, and producing memorable, custom-made music for t.v., film & other media. I consider myself an "artistic problem solver": I strive to get to the essential conceptual truth of what the client is looking for - and to express it in a creative and supportive way. [READ MORE]

PRESS QUOTES

[David Murray’s] band for the Vanguard dates includes the pianist D.D. Jackson, a former Murray sideman who’s also been missing on the scene for a couple of decades. I asked him after the set where he’s been. Turns out he’s been composing music for children’s television, for which he’s won some Emmy Awards and, presumably, some decent paychecks—necessities since he’s been married and had a couple of kids (which was not his situation when I last saw him). Meanwhile, he’s lost none of his brilliance, whether mad-dashing across the keyboard (he was an acolyte of Don Pullen, whose legacy he embodies with fine flair), comping with deep lyricism, or . . . well, anything the occasion demands. I hope Murray’s return means Jackson’s as well.

— Fred Kaplan, Stereophile, May/17

New to me was D.D. Jackson: a Juno Award-winning Canadian jazz composer and pianist who wowed the audience with a spiky improvisation on a Scott Joplin rag, then switched to the Hammond B3 to perform his arrangement of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, taking flight on the organ while the Metropolis players tried to keep up. 

— Feast of Music

There’s the kinetic jazz pianist D.D. Jackson, for instance, about whom the drummer complained, ‘I never get to enjoy playing with him because I’m too busy trying to top him. Damn you, D.D., I’m hurting.’

Jackson’s creation is an impressive montage of controlled chaos, exciting solo work and promise of things to come: a febrile fusion of futuristic jazz, contemporary classical, streetwise funk and Afro-Cuban sensuality.

— Harvey Siders, Jazz Times, Oct./2003 [review of Suite for New York]

D.D. Jackson is, at his best, the most inventive pianist under 50, dashing across the keyboard with preternatural speed yet never losing his classical grace and precision or his left-hand bluesy roots....

— Fred Kaplan, The Absolute Sound

The score is a powerful, identifiably Jacksonesque effort full of energy, rhythm, and flourish...

— Mark Miller, the Globe and Mail [review of the opera Quebecite]

Swinging, immediate and risk-taking, Sigame is everything a great jazz album should be.

— Pulse magazine [review of Sigame]

“They should have called it “Stand Back, Here Comes D.D. Jackson.” This passionate young Canadian pianist sounds like a state-of-the-art player piano exceeding the limits of human performance. “......So Far” is clearly a contender for jazz record of the year. Don’t miss it.”